The Left-Narodnik talk about the “labouring” peasantry is
such a scandalous imposture and corruption of the socialist
consciousness of the workers that it is necessary to examine it again and
again.

The more our Left Narodniks flaunt their platitudes and saccharine
speeches, the more important it becomes to counter them with precise data
on peasant economy.

There is nothing the Left Narodnik fights shy of so much as
precise data on the peasant bourgeoisie and the peasant
proletariat.

Let us take the returns of the last Zemstvo statistical survey of the
peasants in the vicinity of
Moscow.[1] Here agriculture has taken on a relatively very pronounced
commercial character due to the considerable development of fruit and
vegetable farming. And this example of a district that is more developed as
regards the domination of the market reveals all the more strikingly the
essential features of all peasant economy under
capitalism.

The first district of Moscow suburban peasant economy (we take only
this one district because, unfortunately, the statistics do not give us
general summaries) covers over two thousand peasant farms. The
number is sufficiently large to enable us to study the typical relations
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie among the “labouring”
peasantry.

It is noteworthy that capitalist agriculture here is developing on
ordinary land with farms of extremely small size, 2,336 peasant farms
having a total of 4,253 dessiatines of allotment land, i.e., an average of
less than two dessiatines per farm. If we add 1,761 dessiatines of leased
land and subtract 625 dessiatines of land rented out, we get a total
of 5,389 dessiatines, i.e., an average of more than two dessiatines per
farm. Nevertheless, two-thirds of the peasants employ hired labour!

The higher the level of agricultural techniques, the more intensive the
farming, and the stronger the influence of the market, the more often do we
meet with large-scale production on small plots of
land. This is constantly overlooked by bourgeois professors and our Left
Narodniks, who are so enthusiastic about small farms (reckoned in area of
land), and gloss over the capitalist nature of modern small farms
that employ hired labour.

Let us examine the trade that is going on in allotment land. The
figures for leased and rented out laud show that this trade is very
considerable. About half the leased land is allotment
land. Altogether, 625 dessiatines of allotment land is rented out,
and 845 dessiatines are leased. Clearly, the old system of-allotment land
tenure, which by its very nature is identified with serfdom and
medievalism, is be coming an obstacle to modern trade and
capitalist circulation. Capitalism is breaking down the old system
of allotment tenure. Farming is not adapting itself to the
official allotment, but is demanding the free sale and
purchase of land, free renting and leasing in conformity with the demands
of the market, the requirements of the bourgeois economic system.

Take the peasant proletariat. Under this category, first of all, come
405 households (out of the 2,336) which are either landless or have up to
half a dessiatine of land. These 405 households own 437 dessiatines of
allotment land. But these are poor, largely horseless, peasants, who do not
have the wherewithal to engage in farming. They rent out 372
dessiatines—the greater part of their land—and are themselves becoming
wage-workers. Of the 405 households, 376 “provide” agricultural
labourers, or industrial workers who have given up farming.

Take the richest peasant bourgeoisie. Here 526 households have farms of
over three dessiatines. This already is capitalist farming, with fruit and
vegetable growing. Of these 526 farmers, 509 employ labourers. The working
members of the families number 1,706, and they employ 1,248 labourers (by
the year or season), exclusive of day-labourers (51,000 working days).

These households own a total of 1,540 dessiatines, an average of less
than three dessiatines of allotment land per household. But they rent out
only 42 and lease 1,102 dessiatines, of which 512 dessiatines is allotment
land! By “concentrating” land in this way, these “labouring” peasants,
having an average of three working members of the faintly per
farm, are becoming typical bourgeois with an average of two and a half
hired labourers per farm and nearly a hundred hired day-labourer
working days. The buying and selling of the produce of land leads
to the development of the buying and selling of land itself
(leasing and renting out), and to the buying and selling of
labour-power.

Now consider the Left Narodniks’ assertion that the abolition of
private ownership of the land means “withdrawing the land” from
commercial circulation! This is a purely philistine fairy-tale. In fact,
the very opposite is the case; this abolition would draw the land into
commercial circulation on a vaster scale than ever before. The
capital now being spent on the purchase of land would be released, the
feudal and bureaucratic obstacles to the free transfer of land from one
person to another would disappear, and capitalism, i. e., the renting out
of land by the proletariat and the “concentration” of land by the
bourgeoisie, would develop still more rapidly.

This measure, which is useful as a means of fighting the feudal
landlords, the Left Narodniks try to pass off as “socialism”, though
actually it is only a bourgeois measure. It is undeniable that the peasant
proletarians and the peas ant bourgeoisie have common interests
against the landlords. Every Marxist working man knows that, but to
obscure consciousness of the class antagonisms between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie by jabber about the “labouring” peasantry
means deserting to the bourgeoisie, deserting to the enemies of socialism.

Moscow suburban farming shows us, as if under a magnifying glass, what
is going on everywhere in Russia in a milder and less definable
form. Everywhere the peasant who does not hire himself out or does not
himself employ hired labour is already becoming the exception. Every day,
even in the remoter districts, we find trade developing, and the gulf
between the proletarians (hired workers) and the small proprietors,
the petty bourgeoisie, the peasants, widening more and more.

It is the aim of the urban proletariat to develop a clear realisation
of this class antagonism, which, in the rural districts, is
obscured by the specific features of agriculture and the survivals of
serfdom. It is the aim of the bourgeoisie, in whose footsteps the
petty-bourgeois Left Narodniks are foolishly following, to hinder
the realisation of this class antagonism by means of empty, meaningless and
utterly false phrases about the “labouring” peasantry.